TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

rocks. Twenty-five cents each! It was my in-country
R&R secret place. Please don't tell anyone but I did
take a few of my troops with me as honorary second
lieutenants ... and they appreciated that. I don't know
but that might have been against the UCMJ or some
other regulation. They needed - they deserved - some
diversion. So sue me.
Next to the BOQ was a VN whorehouse which was the
first stop for my men. I was freshly married and, I say
with a certain degree of sadness, never enjoyed the
wares of that particular house of the rising sun. So I
would get shitfaced and tumble down the stairs to
(drum roll please) a bed! The USN lacks our appreciation
for misery, mud, and deprivation. I could get a
Fourth Platoon
SHOWER! I would drink the water from the shower and
it had no adverse effect upon my internals. Perhaps the
gin within me obliterated the nasty micro-organisms
spilling forth from the shower. I could drink anything
and be OK. Not true when I got back to the World. After
Jane and I reunited at the Plaza Hotel for three
nights, I returned to Brooklyn - the land of one (when it
is absent of floating bodies) of the cleanest public water
systems in the U. S. I fell ill with uncontrollable shaking,
a 104 degree temperature and a belief that, after
surviving VN, I was going to die in the place of my birth
- Brooklyn. I'm writing this bio so that is proof that I
didn't die.
Anyway - back to Nam. So I am at MACV at the officer's
mess. And there is the liquid I cherish right after
alcohol: milk! Milk was coming from a refrigerated
stainless cow whose white, pure liquid was dispensed
by the mere lift of a lever. Viola! So I asked myself, "self,
What if we filled these 5 gallon containers with water and
choppered them to Khe Sanh or where-ever?" The milk was
made in a dairy just outside of Da Nang - powdered
milk plus purified water. I wasn't interested in the milk
but I was seriously interested in the container. For 42
cents one could buy a Sholey Triple A fluted container.
I motored back (yes, I had friends that would let me
borrow a driver and a jeep) to MACV and found two
light colonels in R & D. I had a container with me and I
showed them/ told them the container that personified
my idea. And I was so excited... I hadn't even paid the
42 cents. It was yesterday: one of the colonels said: "
lieutenant, we have spent $88,000 in research on this
problem and you come in here with a solution. Amazing!
" They backed me all the way. I got the resources to
4‐33